Essays From The Master

Often one comes to martial arts with some mission in mind, a cause of some sort in which one, knowingly or not, casts one’s self as a hero. It is equally true that no matter what one does as to one’s cause, one will be cast as a villain in the eyes of someone linked to that same cause on one side or another. If one completes one’s mission or if the facts as to one’s chosen mission change, does one stop training, is the path that brought one through the mission no longer valid? If the one cause, the one mission, the goal was finite i.e. defeating one enemy then the answer is yes but what if another enemy arises, does one start over? To focus training on missions is to place one’s self under the authority of one’s mission which allows one to justify any action because it is for the cause, even at the cost of one’s ideals and the compromise of one’s philosophy. On the stage of the world there will be those that use the idea of one’s cause to control the persons with that cause which has brought great nations and whole cultures to ruin. How does the martial artist avoid these traps and stay on the path, how do the tools of war become an unimpeachable way of life that one take one past the missions and causes that arise in the course of one’s life on the stage of the world? If one has a cause or mission to start with or not one still has to live and a part of life is dealing with the terms of being on the stage of the world balanced against dealing with the other people on the stage of the world, is that not cause enough to be healthy and thus train?

Being healthy and capable in life is not a cause bigger than one’s self or a mission one has taken on or been called to take on, it’s a reason to train. It’s a reason to train that mostly benefits and only takes from one’s own self while enabling one to help others et al if one elects to do so in one’s life. One’s reason to train could be no more than seeking to make the most of one’s self or to discipline one’s self against some flaw one has whether it is food or some other pleasure or a distraction of some sort. Missions end whether they succeed or not, causes can turn out to be false or too must for the one that takes them on; both causes and missions will always let the person that trains toward them down and one will disappoint one’s self and stop training or become a zealot and destroy one’s self in the process. A simple reason to train, a bit of logic, will do none of these things because a reason is ether worth it or not, it’s not grand or complex, it simply is and one acts on it or not with no one being hurt one way or the other. Causes can be debated by others, missions can be proven faulty but nothing can assail a reason to train if one applies one’s will to that reason. Causes and missions all too often depend on and manipulated by others that may not share one’s understanding of them but one’s reason is one’s own that no one can take away. One can have a cause and take on missions but a reason to train will remain when causes and missions fail.

Some in the process of training for a mission or a cause find a reason to train that goes beyond said mission or cause such as spirituality, religion or some other philosophy that does not tend toward missions or causes. The reason can as simple as the need to survive i.e. if one does not train and thus discipline one’s self one will die because of food and the like. If one can find a reason to train that will endure past any cause or a mission one will train with or without the cause or mission which will empower one to see to any cause or mission that one elects to take on. One key to having a reason to train is that it only concerns one’s self and another is that said reason usually does not directly involve combat. One trains to be healthy, one trains to feel good, one trains to overcome a personal flaw or to build on some insight that came while training for a past cause or mission. With a reason to train one can use combat but one does not have to, to set reason over missions and causes is to set one’s self free and thus embrace a fullness of being sentient.